Legal

Tension rising with Mainland students in American universities

Interesting observations at China Law Blog about how Mainland Chinese students studying in the USA — in contrast to Chinese from other countries — are apparently generating a lot of anger among the American students: Chinese Students In America. It’s Bad Out There.

It seems that Mainland Chinese attitudes toward education don’t play well among their American classmates. For example:

“They cheat all the time. It is pretty unbelievable how often I have seen them cheating. I am always complaining to my professors about this, but they usually just act like they are too important to deign to deal with something like this. Just come watch a test being adminstered and it will be obvious. They are allowed to get away with it because they pay the foreign tuition rate.”

“One student told me of how all the students not from China agreed not to speak one day to see what would happen. There was no class discussion and the teacher asked them not to do it again.”

3 thoughts on “Tension rising with Mainland students in American universities”

I read all the readings associated with this reading and I agree with most of the negative sentiments. I know from trying to run an English Language School with a Chinese Partner that cheating is normal as is deception. But it’s not just education, read Paul Midler’s Poorly Made in China.

Cheating, deception and quality fade is just part and parcel of Chinese manufacturing. That is why American investment in China is going down and so is investment from other Western countries not as good as it was. My Chinese partner is much the same which is why I’m closing down after nearly 6 years in China.

However, the Chinese are just dishonest by our standards. They have no idea of Western values which are pretty mainstream in the rest of the world with some variations.

I can see why the Americans have had enough which is why I’m certain there will be a war between China and America. My information is the Americans will not invade China using troops, it’s too large with too many people. They will just use drones and nukes and bomb China back 50-60 years and then let them fight among themselves.

My country, Australia, conducted research throughout the 70s and 80s before Australians engaged with China. We have no problems with Chinese students because we demand a high score for the IELTS test (7) and run our own language tests as well. In business we just take the money and keep our distance. Chinese also mix better with the locals in Australia and there’s quite a bit of intermarriage, however, its mainly with Chinese outside China not from the mainland..

However, I have found to my bad lack that it is impossible to engage in business on an equal footing with Chinese on the mainland, as they either view others as either better or worse than themselves. The fact is there is no such concept as equality in China. As they say, it’s a suck ass, kick down society! However, as all the readings suggest Chinese students from Hong Kong, Singapore and elsewhere in Asia are much easier to get along with and do business with.

I don’t think what you’ve said is very accurate. How can his post be racist when he distinguished between Mainland Chinese and other Chinese (HK, Taiwan, etc.), explicitly saying that the problem was with Mainlanders specifically, not all Chinese? Are Mainland Chinese a different race from Hong Kongers and Taiwanese?

Also, Westerners typically automatically distinguish in their minds between the people and the government. They don’t have a political gripe with the Chinese people, but with the Party.